Experience was not my only teacher
by BlackEyedGirl
Summary: It is his father who teaches him to write his name. Roads taken, the people that put us on them, and the ones who keep us there. Sam gen, from preseries to post.


**Title:** Experience was not my only teacher  
**Fandom:** West Wing  
**Characters:** Sam gen. (Canon pairings and past OCs)  
**Rating:** PG  
**Genre:** Drama  
**Length:** 4,000 words  
**Disclaimer:** All belongs to Sorkin and Wells.  
**Spoilers:** Set from pre-series into post-series  
**Summary:** "It is his father who teaches him to write his name." Roads taken, the people that put us on them, and the ones who keep us there.

* * *

It is his father who teaches him to write his name. Norman writes it on the first line – Samuel Norman Seaborn – and hands Sam the pen. The paper is thick and pure white. Sam's hold on the fountain pen is shaky, and he smudges the page halfway through his first name. The paper is ruined, and the side of his hand covered in black ink. His father wraps his arms around Sam's waist from behind and swings him away to the bathroom to wash his hands. 

When they return, Sam eyes the page tremulously. Norman balls it up and tosses it into the trash. He places another sheet on the table, and copies Sam's name onto it. This time Sam gets it right. He beams at the page, taking a pleasure in the duplicate S's, and the N holding the middle spot. When he reads it back he discovers that the sound of the repeated double syllables is nice too. Sam feels his father's hand on his shoulder, and turns around to check that he is as delighted as Sam.

Norman ruffles his hair and leans down to say cheerfully, "See? Sometimes all you need is to start on a fresh page."

- - -

His mother reads him books he is too young for. He is too young even for Alice and Wonderland, so Dickens goes mostly over his head. But he sits beside her and listens to the words, losing himself between syllables and in the long descriptions that evoke London and smoke, and a world lost or always a make-believe. He will never cure himself of the desire to conjure images of beauty from plain black and white.

- - -

Sam's first official teacher of writing was Miss DuMont. She was pretty, with long blonde hair, and he was angry at himself for making her frown when he handed in his work. All he has done is written a three-sentence story, and Sam does not know why she looks so unhappy.

When she is looking away, he checks Chris's work quickly, to see if he can work out what he has done wrong. Chris is still working on his first line, so that doesn't help at all. Miss DuMont comes over to him again, smiling now, and hands back the page which now has a big gold star on it. She tells him he is very special, and Chris's hurt look does nothing to dispel the warm glow this brings.

- - -

She was the also the first person to pass him a dictionary – the magical book that not only used beautiful words, but gave him new ones and told them what they meant. At nine years old he had a brief love affair with the word _fidelity. _He closed his eyes and whispered it in bed at night, rhyming off the description afterwards. For a while it seemed to mean all love, all devotion, all loyalty.

His mother was cleaning his lip, murmuring a scolding as she wiped the blood away. He had dived like a wildcat after the boys who were taunting Chris for being dumb, and ended up all cuts and bruises. He whispers it again – _fidelity_ - as if that one word will make her understand why he had been compelled to bleed for the other little boy. She strokes his hair sadly, and nods.

- - -

Sam is ten, maybe, when he first reads the Declaration of Independence for himself. He is arrested for whole minutes by the phrase, '_life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness'. _There, in seven words, is everything one could demand of a country, everything worth dying to get.He moves on, after his shock, to the rest of the document, and then the Constitution and Bill of Rights. The dictionary sits beside him, and he goes to bed still trying to work bits of it out. He forgets that moment of awe for a long while.

When he meets Toby, he will remember again, out of the blue, how so few words can encompass whole worlds of meaning.

- - -

He has not yet turned eleven the first time he remembers being called a freak for his writing. There has been teasing before, but the word, repeated and sung at him, burns a mark into his thoughts. Missing fifth grade, jumping him into middle school a year early, was supposed to fix these problems. He does not know why the word – obfuscate he thinks – made them all so upset. It is the first time he understands that his use of words makes people angry, not only confused. It is the first time he realises that a word, unadorned, separate from tone or accompanying shove, can leave a mark.

- - -

In freshman year of high school he finds Mr James, who takes English and the Debate Team. He tells Sam to wait behind at the end of their first week and asks him to come along to Debate and see if he likes it.

The others there are seventeen and eighteen mostly, but when he sticks up a hand, they go quiet and listen to him. The power is dizzying, and even when they laugh at the end and shoot him down, he lives for Friday afternoons.

- - -

Mr James leaves near the end of Junior Year, and Mr Collins replaces him in both English and Debate. Mr Collins is much less pleasant than Mr James, especially in English. He calls on Sam continually, and he cannot help his answers from running away from him. Rambling, Mr Collins calls it. In Debate though, he never asks Sam to venture an opinion, and he needs to fight to be heard again.

One day in English, when Sam has been thrown into the spotlight again, Mr Collins bangs his hand on the desk, making them all jump.

"It doesn't matter which side you argue, Mr Seaborn, just pick a side! Tell me what you believe, even if you don't think I want to hear it. Make me believe you!"

So he does, looking up and meeting his teacher's eye. He is called to wait after class again, handed brochures for law school and told to pick sensible majors. Told never to sit on the fence just because he thought no one wanted to hear him.

- - -

Sophie, his first college girlfriend, had dark hair, a blush, and a keen line in biting sarcasm when provoked. They debated in pairs when they could get away with it, he of the monologues and she of the wicked one-liners. Sam learnt that writing was so much better with a partner.

- - -

His second girlfriend is someone who Sophie semi-affectionately dubs a debate-groupie. Caroline is quiet and blonde and the opposite of prickly Sophie. She attends the debates but never says anything; Sam still notices the way she focuses intently on the speakers as they talk.

After a long debate – him and Sophie winning even now– arguing ferociously in favour of the ERA, she approaches him. Or he approaches her; he's not sure. The first few minutes of conversation were incredibly awkward, but she asks him about some point he made and he answers her. Her head ducks, and she looks up at him through a wave of fair hair. Like this, it is easier, and she tells him later that his proposal to go for coffee was eloquent. _Eloquent_ he repeats, as if a child again, and she smiles. This is the girl he will write poetry to, and long letters to Dakota when she goes home again. She keeps the letters in a box in her room; they have the power to bind her love to him long after everything else has faded.

- - -

For all his years of venerating words, it is not until Sam is twenty that he discovers their absence hurts too. A heady summer romance followed by a semester of nothing tells him all he has ever wanted to know about silence. For a while, he has no words either, is unable to pin down the meaning of this sorrow. It is, he thinks, his first heart-break, and it seems appropriate that it comes this way – with a dearth of the words that should have been.

- - -

He meets Josh Lyman for the first time when he is twenty-three. Josh is all busy hands and mouth, and Sam is quiet around him. He watches, because Josh is not good with words, but somehow the things that need to be done get done. Josh is always in and out of meetings with the Congressman, and whenever Sam sees him he is in mid-conversation, brow-beating someone on the other side of the country.

When he meets Josh again it is one year later, and he doesn't expect to be remembered. Josh has a legitimate place alongside the Congressman now, and one day he pulls Sam in with him. Sam finds an arm wrapped tightly around his shoulder and an easy murmur in his ear that tells him nothing of why he has been so rewarded.

He will leave everything for love of this man, and belief in what he represents. Josh will not have to say a word.

- - -

Lisa is good with words. She is beautiful, and her nails are painted pale pink, but the first thing that Sam notices is that she is the only other person with a notebook in their hands.

She leans across and whispers in his ear, making him freeze still rather than moving and risking sending her away. "Can I steal your pen?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Your pen. Mine's all out." She taps it on the page and, true enough, no ink spills out.

"Sure." He passes it to her. "You're a writer?"

"God, no," she laughs. "I'm a reporter. Just here to write a review. What about you?"

"I'm a lawyer. With Dewey Ballantine?"

"Well paid, well dressed, _and_ a patron of the arts. I'm impressed."

"Thank you... If you don't mind me asking, the play hasn't started yet… What do you have to write?"

She smiles again, and tears the page from her notebook. The page gets pressed into his palm, along with his borrowed pen. "Call me."

He reads her name from the page – Lisa Sherborne – and looks her up before he calls. Her reviews make him laugh. She is casually scathing, witty even when she is tearing something apart, and somewhere here is captured that remembered charm. None of these things will change, and in the closing moments she will review their relationship as if it had been one of the plays they had long stopped attending together. A clever commentary on what had happened: true-sounding, but not how Sam remembers it. He had loved her for her words before anything else, and for the words she drew out of him after that. The day Josh arrives, it has been quiet in his head for so long that the sudden noise nearly deafens him. Lisa tries to hush them low again, and Sam knows he has to leave.

- - -

The Governor doesn't like prevarication, even when it is the same kind that everyone does, even when it is not really a lie but an omission. So they say their opponent's name, they answer questions about every legislative action he ever made, even the ones that will lose votes. And instead, miraculously, they start gaining. As if, despite all Sam has ever been told, has ever understood about politics, sometimes the right guy doesn't finish last.

He will learn everything from Josiah Bartlet, from chess and literature to what it takes to be President, someday, and why he should do it nonetheless. But the _first_ thing that he learns from the Governor is that some of the immutable rules of speech-writing can be broken.

- - -

It is Toby though, who shows him which these rules are.

Sam is wedded to these words, has been staring at them so long that he cannot countenance losing them, despite all Toby's protestations. From Toby he has learned that a sentence to be spoken should not have fifty words in it, and should contain verbs of some kind. Poetry in the silences, in the pauses, in the crescendos of great force. This is what he hears Toby say, though the man himself will deny it. Sam hears it in the silences, and in the pauses, in how Toby slams his hand on the table or rests it on his heart.

Toby reaches an arm around him and wraps his hand around Sam's. Sam is four again, a bigger hand around his own, stopping the pen from running amok. The line that obliterates his precious words is Toby's, not Sam's, but he appreciates the sentiment. Days had gone by where Toby would simply have erased them without asking. He sighs when Toby drops his hand, looking forlornly at the page.

Patting him lightly on the shoulder, Toby's voice is gentle in instruction. "Take a breath. And start again from the beginning."

Sam leans over the page and writes, clear and quick: _Samuel Norman Seaborn._

Toby snorts inelegantly. "I was born in a log cabin?"

He tries again. _Democracy is not a passive process. Our founding fathers gifted us with a system which requires us to fully engage in it, to give of ourselves in order that we might achieve a more perfect union. Democracy requires dialogue; it requires us to acknowledge that there are smart people who disagree with us, and that this isn't something to be afraid of. It is only when we are forced to defend our position against criticism that we can truly understand ourselves. Which views are mere prejudices, ready to be discarded, and which are those we will defend with our blood and with our very being - screaming at the top of our voices while our opponent screams at the top of his. Democracy demands that we _think_ and we should not run away from that. _

Toby, bent over Sam's shoulder, pressed against him, nods. "Better."

- - -

CJ resents playing peacemaker for Josh and Toby: between them, or between them and the hordes of offended people that follow after them. She tells Sam that her being the only female in the Senior Staff doesn't mean she wants to play mommy to a pair of… He ignores the words.

And she isn't the mother of them, but she might just be the big sister he never had. She is scared too, she's never been on a campaign this big, and neither has he. Maybe that's why she sits beside him in the bar, watching Toby and Josh getting increasingly louder, and the argument getting more and more personal.

CJ sighs, eventually, calls them something else inventive and unrepeatable, and stands up. There is exasperation there, but love too, and the three of them are laughing together before Sam reaches them.

One day, in the middle of the campaign, she confesses that she is terrified. And what does she do then, he asks? "You just keep talking, Sam. Crack a joke. You make them laugh, you're not afraid, and if you're not afraid, you've got them eating out of your hand. Never let them know that you don't know what to say."

- - -

"Fake it til you make it," is Leo's translation of that. Some days it feels like that's all they do. Some days it feels like they're constantly on the back foot, being outthought and outmanoeuvred by their enemies. Worse, he thinks sometimes that they let themselves lose a little; they are so terrified of losing a lot.

Except that Leo comes in one day and tells them to run into walls, to enter the ring and fight, and it turns out that he hadn't understood what their boss had meant. Sam has never had to act as if he had faith – it has been a constant companion, the only one. And Leo means, has always meant, that they should use that faith and be unafraid of loss. He cannot imagine, as they start to make the phone calls they had been forbidden to make, saying things they had thought themselves unable to say, why he had ever thought any different.

- - -

He was the first one to say it. "You're gonna run for President one day. Don't be scared. You can do it. I believe in you."

There would be others afterwards, but none so important.

Sam is still afraid, on that day and on the ones to come. Afraid of screwing up, afraid of letting this man down, afraid of not being good enough. But he is not afraid to try. From that day, until the day he finally placed his hand on the bible and recited the oath, it is in the back of his mind. He had not been told that he would win, and is halfway glad that he has not been given that burden. But he knows, from the day the President speaks the words, until the day Sam makes it true, that he will do this. The President had been the first one to say it, certain in his belief. And Sam had learnt not to be scared.

- - -

He doesn't realise, at the time, that his last State of the Union as speechwriter is his last. There are signs, if he thought about it that way, that the words weren't quite enough anymore. He deletes a swathe of them with one click, when saying them aloud had not exorcised the ghost of what they could have done, the memory of flash without substance, of saying that when he had nothing else to say. He will admit it to no one, but when he leaves, part of him is thinking about curing cancer, and the roads taken on the way to the big picture.

- - -

Will Bailey stops talking to Sam to talk to some of their juvenile campaign staff. "No matter who you vote for, make sure you vote," he corrects. Will throws around phrases like 'the ideas didn't die' and likes the President but doesn't work for him and won't close down this campaign. Sam isn't used to being the one talking about how things make them look. He has a long history of _not_ being that guy. So he gives Will a tie and his name because Will reminds him of a self he had liked better.

- - -

Between his first campaign and his second, they want Sam to have learnt all sorts of things. How to make nice with union leaders and business men, how not to defend his friends when it would hurt the campaign.

It is the first time he has been a bad student.

Josh calls, eventually, the first time in two years. Loss had not come easily to him. "Sam," he says.

"Josh."

"If I forgive you in advance will you stop pansying around the subject?"

"Excuse me?"

"Tell them."

"Tell them what?"

"Tell them you didn't agree with what President Santos did. Tell them you thought it was wrong!"

"And then what?"

"And then you win your election," Josh answers simply.

"On the back of criticising an unpopular President for an unpopular war that he couldn't avoid? He was damned either way…"

"Sam."

"You were damned either way too, Josh."

"Yeah. Just… just listen, okay? I'm giving you my permission, you got that? Go to town. Tear us apart, and say you were never a part of it. You weren't in those meetings. Disavow any and all knowledge, Sam. It doesn't matter about us anymore. We're through."

"Josh."

"Yeah?"

"It'll always matter. I was in the room. I made my case, and he went the other way. I'm not going to pretend I wasn't part of that administration any more than I'll pretend I wasn't with President Bartlet. For the people outside the building, I was there. We all screwed up."

Josh sighs, and Sam hangs up on him. He goes on television and says what he has always said. These are my friends, and I stand and fall with them.

- - -

"You're not a rookie anymore," Toby says.

"This is a Presidential campaign," Sam answers, "I think I've grasped the importance."

"No one's disputing that," Toby says, "You can't even say the word without closing your eyes, Sam – we all know how you feel about it."

"So?"

"You're ready, Sam. You can win. But you can't say this." Toby takes the page, as he has done a thousand times, the way his campaign staff won't, now. The line, one of Sam's, has a mild pencil-drawn question mark beside it. Toby takes a red pen from his pocket and obliterates it.

"I ran a campaign on that line," Sam protests.

"You ran a Senate campaign on that. You're not running for Senate."

"Toby…"

"You're running for President, Sam! Don't hide from that."

Sam doesn't know what Leo had to do to get President Bartlet ready to run, and he isn't sure that Toby does either. But Toby has the right that no one else does – to say what he thinks because Sam cannot put him on the payroll, and because Sam is still a little in awe of his boss. Toby who had said that they could not govern if they could not win, and yet had still held Sam close for doing what he believed in, for not cutting and running. So when Toby tells him, again, what he needs to do, Sam cuts the line. He's learnt by now to listen.

He listens when Toby calls him, seconds before they announce the winner. Toby is silent when the rest of the room goes wild, and Sam has to struggle to hear him. "Don't be scared," Toby echoes. "And don't screw up."

- - -

They think he doesn't need to learn anymore. Oh, they will disagree with him on policy without question. Because, back when he was young enough that no one hesitated to correct him, he learnt from the President. He is veritably _surrounded_ by smart people who disagree with him. But they would not presume to try and teach him. He pleads with his eyes, to Josh, to Will, anyone. That he is still a man, and fallible.

Sam thinks about testing it, sometimes. Handing Will a page of corrections which are just _wrong_, to see what happens. To see if Will, who had come sailing with him in California, who had stolen his ties, who had punched him, once, because they were drunk and miserable; to see if Will would dare tell him no.

He doesn't, because he has never been as good at screwing with his staff's heads as President Bartlet was. And because he is terrified of what it means if Will doesn't fix it. What other mistakes he could be making behind this desk that they don't tell him about, don't try and mend.

- - -

He is not a teacher yet, and he cannot understand how to explain this to them. How to go back to the man who no one was ever afraid to argue with. President Bartlet had tried to explain this to him, a stream of instructions that began – _Leo didn't call me by name for the entire time I was in office. No, I lie, it happened twice. _

Sam wanders into his study to find one of the three people in the world who doesn't call him sir.

"Daddy!" Kat says happily.

"Hey, honey, what ya doing?"

She holds up a pen, ink trailing messily down her hands onto her pristine white sweater. "Show me?" she asks.

He takes down the thick white paper, and a clean pen. Pulling her onto his lap, Sam smiles, and takes his daughter's hand to write her name. The ink spills, makes her hand worse and douses his own. She turns to him with an unsteady expression. He wraps one arm tightly around her and kisses the top of her head. "Tonight, you and I are going to discover Dickens."

He starts on a new page.

* * *

FIN. Feedback is always lovely 


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